For a seatbelt apparatus equipped to protect a vehicle occupant seated in a seat of a vehicle, techniques have been implemented in recent years in which any change in the riding posture of the vehicle occupant is reduced by rapidly restraining the occupant with a belt or webbing in an emergency, when there is instability in the travel state of the vehicle (abnormal operation), or the like.
A typical example of such known vehicle seatbelt apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication (JP-A) No. 2001-163186, corresponding to U.S. Patent Published Application No. 2001/0004030 A1. In the disclosed vehicle seatbelt apparatus, when a vehicle occupant gets out or is going to get out, a seat belt is securely retracted to a predetermined storage position. The seat belt is re-retracted when a buckle switch detects disengagement of the buckle and the tang plate, when an occupant detecting device detects non-presence of the occupant in the automobile, when a door switch detects a door being in the opened state, and when an engine key switch detects that an engine key is pulled out or is in an off state. By thus performing retracting operation two times, the seat belt can be positively retracted into the predetermined storage position.
However, the prior vehicle seatbelt apparatus has a problem that when the vehicle passenger shifts the seat in a forward or backward direction while gripping a tongue plate of the seat belt, the seat belt apparatus detect a pay-out of the seat belt and activates the retractor to take-up the seat belt into the retractor. A retracting movement of the belt thus caused by the belt take-up operation is resistant to and hinders a belt-attaching operation by the vehicle occupant, deteriorating the comfort and convenience of the seatbelt apparatus.